Structurally Unsound

By Michael Lind

Published: April 1, 2001

THE TROUBLE WITH GOVERNMENT

By Derek Bok.

493 pp. Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard University Press. $35.

''Throughout most of the 1990's,'' Derek Bok observes near the beginning of his new book, ''large majorities of the public felt that the country was headed in the wrong direction and that Washington deserved much of the blame.'' According to Bok, the genuine problems facing the United States cannot be attributed to the familiar scapegoats: ''If there is any persistent theme that emerges from this book, it is that many of the government's failings are not primarily the result of scheming politicians, incompetent bureaucrats or selfish interest groups.''

In ''The State of the Nation'' (1997), Bok compared the institutional performance of the United States with that of other advanced democracies; in ''The Trouble With Government,'' he examines Americans' attitudes toward their institutions. The backing of influential foundations, and Bok's own status as a former president of Harvard University, give the books something of the weight of official white papers. His political views, which he makes no effort to conceal, are representative of the moderate liberalism dominant on university campuses and in elite editorial offices, though not in the halls of political power, corporate boardrooms or the corridors of the Pentagon. But it is not necessary to share his politics to agree with much of his analysis.

''Politicians are rarely incompetent,'' Bok writes. ''In fact, they tend to be very well-educated, highly intelligent and remarkably energetic. The media have not seriously damaged the political process, nor are they principally to blame for the negativism and triviality of much reporting on civic issues. Of the three suspects, lobbyists appear to be the most culpable, but even their influence was greatly exaggerated until recently, when their campaign contributions and grassroots lobbying began to reach a size sufficient to merit serious concern.'' If these three diagnoses of the condition of the body politic are false, or at least inadequate, it follows that reforms based on those diagnoses cannot be adequate remedies. Bok divides the most familiar panaceas into three categories: those like term limits, ballot initiatives and decentralization ''that put more control in the hands of the people''; ''remedies that seek to change the bureaucracy'' and reinvent government; and ''those that seek to change the way election campaigns are financed in order to reduce the impact of money,'' which, he notes, are ''remedies of choice for many editorial writers and public-interest activists.''

Bok is sympathetic to campaign finance reform and new approaches to public administration, but warns that they should not be oversold. Term limits, for example, could make inexperienced politicians prey for lobbyists and professional staff members; ballot initiatives short-circuit the give and take of the legislative process; and state and local governments, idealized by proponents of devolution, are often worse than Washington. Many state governments have been ''amateurish,'' while many cities ''have notoriously bloated and inefficient bureaucracies'' and few have done particularly well in fulfilling their central responsibilities, ''such as providing public education'' and ''enacting building codes.''

As an alternative to the conventional wisdom, Bok proposes a new emphasis on what he considers to be the three fundamental problems of the American political order. These are ''the fragmentation and lack of accountability that lead to poorly designed, incoherent legislation; the command-and-control regulation that produces costly rules, lengthy delays, frequent litigation and only modest results; and the political impotence of poor and working-class Americans that accounts for most of the deficiencies of America's social and employment legislation.''

In ''The State of the Nation,'' Bok, representing a view widespread among American liberals, faulted the United States for failing to live up to an idealized Western European welfare state. An admiration for European models also informs his discussion here. Regulations could be less detailed and rigid, Bok says, if the government could bargain with European-style associations representing business and labor; as it is now, ''there are often too many parties involved to allow a manageable negotiation to take place.'' He muses that Congress could pass more coherent, programmatic legislation if the two parties were as effective in controlling their members as are the parties in many European nations: ''One reform . . . would do a lot to encourage greater unity and concern for the national welfare. Congress could pass a law requiring voters to choose between each party's slate of candidates for federal office,'' instead of allowing them to split their tickets. But even if so unlikely a change were made, in an era in which more voters describe themselves as moderate than as liberal or conservative and when third-party candidates can affect the outcomes of presidential elections, Americans might become more alienated than ever. Bok himself notes that turnout tends to be higher in multiparty democracies, where voters are given more than two choices.

The third fundamental defect of American democracy that Bok perceives is the failure of low-income Americans to translate their numbers into political power. The United States, he observes, has come to resemble the ideal of John Stuart Mill, who wanted to ''give everyone a vote . . . but give two votes to graduates of Cambridge and Oxford.'' Bok admits to being troubled by public ignorance and inattentiveness. Nevertheless, he argues, ''the ends of democracy are best served when all citizens and groups have equivalent power.'' He makes the provocative suggestion that civic responsibility should not be limited to voting but could take the form of participation in ''new and expanded forms of self-government'' like ''works councils, community organizations, parent involvement in public schools, and patient groups.'' We Americans have shown enormous creativity in inventing new institutions in the market and civil society, but our notion of civic duty has shrunk from the kinds of participation provided by mandatory military service and jury duty to the act of voting.

Any ambitious summary of the state of politics is bound to inspire disagreement from those who do not share the author's view of the world. Although his prescriptions will not persuade everyone, Derek Bok has performed a public service by discrediting a number of popular but misconceived political panaceas based on false diagnoses of what ails the American body politic.

Michael Lind is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and a lecturer at Harvard Law School.